He's probably right, unfortunately, given the economics of consoles. Spiralling development costs and risk-averse publishers/vendors will see to it for a while. The current model will have to collapse due to excessive expense or a disruptive technology first. Online distribution might do it.
Graphics-led marketting and the mid-nineties round of consolidation did for storytelling on the PC in the mid-to-late-nineties, and the same forces are quite frankly more of a problem on the consoles right now.
I don't think online distribution will do it. It will help, but it still remains the market for people who aren't generally buying the mass market games anyway. How many copies of the latest PS2/3 (or X360) smash hit have you seen in the hands of people you know who use Steam and the like due to its strength as an online distribution system?
No, the turning point will be when artists are not the limiting factor of cost. This, unfortunately, is an unpredictable event; we see things like procedural textures used to create a good looking first person shooter than you can fit 10 times on a floppy disk, you see the UT3 engine, amongst others, using image processing techniques to improve the way things look without increasing the detail of the source textures. However, we could see things like this for a decade and never cross the barrier. It could happen tomorrow.
My thinking is that, at some point, the cost of development must exceed the potential returns to a game. (I estimate that this could occur as early as the XBox 3/PS4, and some would argue that it is verging on true for the PS3 now.) At this point there are basically three possibilities
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Not sure gamers aren't realising it already, look at the huge successes of the DS, Wii, and xbox live arcade, all much cheaper to program for, not blockbuster graphics but all allowed for much more indie developers to succeed.
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Graphics-led marketting and the mid-nineties round of consolidation did for storytelling on the PC in the mid-to-late-nineties, and the same forces are quite frankly more of a problem on the consoles right now.
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No, the turning point will be when artists are not the limiting factor of cost. This, unfortunately, is an unpredictable event; we see things like procedural textures used to create a good looking first person shooter than you can fit 10 times on a floppy disk, you see the UT3 engine, amongst others, using image processing techniques to improve the way things look without increasing the detail of the source textures. However, we could see things like this for a decade and never cross the barrier. It could happen tomorrow.
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